The Church The Schools and Evolution/Truth Must be Investigated Scientifically

by Judson Eber Conant

II. Truth Must Be Investigated Scientifically.

Accepting the self-evident accuracy of the classification we have just outlined, we will now give attention to what the scientific spirit will require of us at those two places where the Church and the Schools have parted company. For if we can get together here, we can both proceed and arrive together in our investigation of truth, and that will end the controversy.

 

1. Faith Must Be Given Precedence over Reason.

Let us see what it will mean to give precedence to faith over reason when we are working in the realm of spiritual truth.

It will mean that believing will precede reasoning in our approach to the Word of God, and this defines the vital distinction between the true Christian and the rationalist.

a. The Method of the Rationalist.

Faith and rationalism are mutually exclusive in the spiritual realm. Rationalizing and doubting are first cousins when the Word of God is involved.

Satan was the first rationalist on earth, and Eve fell when she accepted his reasonings about the Word of God in the place of simple faith in that Word. For Satan raised a question about the Word,—"Yea, hath God said?"—and thereby opened the way for incipient doubt, and then he reasoned Eve into accepting a "common sense" interpretation of what God had said, which proved to be an outright denial of His Word. And look at the consequences—indescribably terrible—of rationalizing about God's Word instead of believing it!

But rationalism did not stop there, for ever since that day all men without exception have been natural-born rationalists. For it is perfectly natural to all men to rationalize about God's Word, but it takes a miracle of Divine power to make any one willing to believe it.

These two attitudes toward Scripture are forever irreconcilable. In the nature of things, they can never be harmonized. The believer in the Word and the rationalist take two utterly divergent paths that cannot possibly reach the same goal.

The program of the rationalist is to arrive at an understanding of spiritual truth over the pathway of reasoning that is apart from faith. That of the believer is to arrive at it over the pathway of reasoning that is founded on faith.

The program of the rationalist is to harmonize the Word of God with his conclusions. That of the believer is to harmonize his conclusions with the Word. The program of the rationalist is to become a critic of the Word and sit in judgment on it. That of the believer is to let the Word become his critic and sit in judgment on him.

These are certainly reasons enough why the believer and the rationalist can never travel together. For the believer is walking by God's estimate of him, while the rationalist is walking by his estimate of God, and these paths go in opposite directions.

If you sit in judgment on some portion of God's Word and determine that it is reasonable, and that since it commends itself to your judgment it is therefore acceptable and you will believe it, that is not faith in the Word but in your own reason. You have surrendered your intellect to your own conclusions but your heart is far from God. Faith in the Word is surrender to it without passing judgment on it.

And yet surrendering one's mind to one's own conclusions about God is precisely the thing that passes for faith in God on the part of those who have lost their old-fashioned, evangelical faith while they were in the Schools, and yet come out with what they describe as a more intelligent and rational faith in God and the Bible. In their desperate attempt to survive the wreck of their orthodox faith, they have reasoned their way to conclusions about God that harmonized with what they were taught in the Schools; but the God they arrived at was the god of rationalism and not the God of Revelation.

They will say to the orthodox man, "You and I go by different pathways, but we both arrive at the same God." But this is eternally impossible! For there is only one pathway leading to the true God, and that is not followed by reasoning one's way out of a shattered faith, but first by believing one's way out of darkness into light, and then by believing steadily on in that divinely imparted faith which always shatters the reasonings and conclusions of the rationalists.

To be a believer in the Word puts rationalism out of business, for no one can reason himself into the acceptance of truth he already believes. And on the other hand, to be a rationalist regarding the Word puts faith out of business, for faith is the acceptance of the bare Word of God without further evidence, and the rationalizer is compelled to reject that attitude toward the Word so that he may have the way left open to reason his way to what he is willing to accept as evidence. This is why so many of those students who sit in the classes of the rationalists in our colleges and seminaries lose their faith. Rationalism makes Scriptural faith impossible. Rationalizing and believing, when the Bible is in question, are mutually exclusive.

The reason for this is not that the facts of Scripture contradict each other, and certainly not that these facts are one thing to faith and another thing to reason. The antagonism does not arise over the facts of the Word but over the interpretation of them. The rationalist, accepting no interpretation except that furnished by his own puny and incompetent reason unillumined by faith, reaches conclusions absolutely contradicted by those arrived at by the man of faith. The fact is, he could not hope to arrive anywhere else. For how can finite man relate and interpret the few and scattered facts he discovers in the realm of infinite truth? How can a man by searching find out God?

"By whose interpretation, yours or mine?" is a favorite question which the rationalist asks the believer when the meaning of some Scripture passage is in question. By no one's interpretation except the Holy Spirit's! He alone can interpret the Bible, for He alone knows what He meant by what He wrote. And even the Holy Spirit is able to interpret the Bible to no one but the believer. For the rationalist, the unbeliever, rejects faith, and thereby completely closes "the eyes of the heart" to the illumination of the Spirit; while the faith of the believer is the very thing that opens the heart to an understanding of the Word. Spiritual apprehension begins only at the point where faith begins.

This is why it is that when the rationalist tries his hand at interpretation he is sure, sooner or later, to bring perfectly harmonious facts into confusion and contradiction.

Take, for example, the facts regarding the development of the human embryo. The rationalist notes that as it develops it bears a striking resemblance, successively, to the more mature forms of some of the lower animals, in an imagined orderly progress from lower to higher. That this resemblance is a fact no one disputes. There is no controversy over the fact. But when the rationalist attempts to explain this fact, he interprets it to mean that man is the product of evolution, rather than a special creation, as the Bible says he is, and thus he thrusts such confusion and contradiction before us that we are compelled to make a choice between his interpretation and the statements of the Bible. The controversy that results is caused altogether by the rationalist thrusting himself into that place that belongs to the Holy Spirit alone. "He shall lead you into all the truth," said Christ, and it is presumptuous in the extreme to seek to do the Holy Spirit's work for Him.

We are forewarned of the methods of the modern rationalist in his approach to the Bible by what Christ said to the Jews who were finding fault with what He taught:

"For had ye believed Moses," He said, "ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?"

This is precisely the pathway modern rationalism has followed. It began by discrediting what Moses wrote, and it has now gone to the length of denying final authority to what Christ said.

Rationalism is both irreverent and destructive when it seeks to do anything with the Word of God. For that Book is to be handled as no other book is. Behind the historical, and the literary, and the textual, and the philosophical criticism must be a spiritual discernment, born of faith alone, which both dominates and regulates all the rest. For just as a blind man may turn the eyes of his head to the sun and see no physical light, so the rationalist may turn the eyes of his mind to the Bible and see no spiritual truth. It takes the eyes of the heart to see spiritual truth, and they can function only through faith.

b. The Method of the Believer.

In order clearly to understand the method of faith, we need right here to guard against another extreme. By the contrasts we have drawn in the last few pages, it is not at all meant that there is no place in the exercise of faith for the exercise also of the intellect at the same time and toward the same object. For, in the nature of things, the intellect must be exercised in a mental apprehension of that which is to be believed before the way is even open for faith to begin.

Neither is it meant that reasoning is so out of harmony with and destructive of faith that its exercise in connection with faith is impossible. For faith is not blind credulity; it is not jumping in the dark; it is not an irrational impulse; it is not swallowing something with the eyes shut. It is rather an open-eyed stepping out on to the spiritual foundations of the universe. But notice—it is stepping out on to spiritual foundations.

It is meant, however, by the contrasts above, that the moment an intellectual apprehension of what is to be believed, followed by a conclusion to accept or reject it according to whether it is reasonable or not—the moment such an attitude is substituted for the heart acceptance of the bare Word of God, even though it may be beyond understanding and reason, that moment the normal exercise of mind and reason has degenerated into a rationalism that makes faith impossible.

Notice an emphasis above. Faith is stepping out upon spiritual foundations. Then recall that to all except the man of presumption, foundations must be seen before they will be stepped upon. The normal man demands to see where he is going.

Now spiritual foundations can be seen only by spiritual eyes. The natural vision cannot see past the natural realm. And spiritual realities will never be stepped out upon until they are seen. For faith is not an abstract and aimless emotion. It requires an object that can be seen, and one that can be trusted.

It is therefore the one main purpose of the Bible to set before men the one saving Object of faith. This purpose lies behind the multiplied revelations of God all through the Old Testament, and the gathering together of all those revelations into Christ in the New Testament in such fullness and finality that He could say: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

But God and Christ must be seen before they can be trusted. Not intellectually or historically, but spiritually seen. And they can be seen only by spiritual eyes. And spiritual vision is possible only through the divine touch. And the divine touch is given only to those who consent; it is not forced on any one. And the attitude of consent is precisely the attitude set forth in Christ's formula: "If any man wills to do, he shall know."

Only by coming into this attitude can any man see God. "The pure in heart," said Christ, "shall see God." It is a heart attitude. And the meaning of the purity of heart that opens the vision to God is brought out when Christ is asked the question, "How is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us and not unto the world?" His answer is of the utmost significance. He says, "If a man love Me, he will keep My words." Keeping His words, willing to do His will—this is the attitude that opens the vision to Him. He and the Father can manifest themselves to and be seen by those only who are in the attitude of consent toward the keeping of His words. This is the only attitude that can bring the anointing of the eyes with that eye-salve which opens them to spiritual vision.

But when the eyes, in response to this attitude of willingness toward the will of God, are once opened to spiritual things, then God, in all the perfections of His divine character, is seen both in the Bible, the written Word, and in Christ, the living Word, and this two-fold revelation of Him is seen to be as perfect and flawless as the God who is thus revealed. Those who think they see imperfections either in the Bible or in Christ are spiritually blind. For when one thinks he sees flaws where there are only infinite perfections, he advertises to all that he is attempting the impossible task of examining spiritual realities with his natural vision, and is therefore passing judgment on what he has never seen.

But when the spiritual vision has once been opened, and God is really seen, in the Bible and in Christ, in all the perfections of His infinitely holy and loving character, the reason at once leads to the conclusion from the facts seen that such a Being is to be trusted, and active faith thereby becomes the outgrowth of that kind of reasoning. That is, the faith that begins as an attitude of willingness toward the will of God, through which attitude the eyes are touched into a vision of the character of God, such a faith comes into and continues in an active submission to that will through the normal functioning of reason.

This shows the vital difference between reasoning and rationalizing, and the relation of each to faith. The effect of reasoning on faith is constructive, while that of rationalizing is destructive. And the heart of the difEerence between the two traces back, in the last analysis, to those two kinds of vision. The rationalist, unyielding to the touch of God on his vision, sees only natural facts, and even then he sees them only partially and wholly out of relation to the spiritual revelation of God in the Bible and in Christ; and thinking that he sees discrepancies between the facts in the natural realm and the statements of Scripture, his reason leads him to reject the Bible as infallible and inerrant, thereby making faith in the God of the Bible utterly impossible. His reasoning powers are simply functioning normally when he concludes to reject the statements about the facts that to him are entirely unseen which do not seem to agree with what he sees. His trouble is not with his reasoning powers but with his vision. Refusing to see what he is passing judgment on, his method of inquiry is rationalizing.

But the believer, utterly yielded to God and therefore seeing Him through anointed eyes in both the written and the living Word, thus seeing the infinite perfections of His character, is led by the normal functioning of the same reason to accept and act on the bare Word of God without further evidence, because the evidence he sees is all the evidence he needs. It is perfectly reasonable, therefore, for Him to accept all that such an One says in His Word, waiting for the partial and apparently contradictory knowledge in the natural realm to be corrected into harmony with the Bible. And his reasoning powers are simply functioning normally when he accepts the Bible as infallible and inerrant, for this attitude is based on what he sees. The entire difference between the rationalist and the believer is a matter of vision. The reasoning powers of each simply act in view of what each sees.

This is why reasoning is never out of harmony with faith, while rationalizing always is. For true reasoning in spiritual things is based on an attitude of faith, while rationalizing rejects that attitude as an essential preliminary to correct conclusions, and therefore reasons either entirely apart from or in order to faith. Such an attitude as opens the vision does not precede the action of reason, and the conclusions cannot help being destructive of faith, for they are pronouncements on things utterly unseen and unknown, and which the Bible says are "foolishness" to the man who sees only through his natural vision. But the attitude of willingness toward the will of God so opens the vision to the whole spiritual realm that the real foolishness is seen to be even the least attempt to pronounce upon or repudiate that which is utterly unseen and unknown.

This is the fundamental reason why there is such divergence, even to the point of mutual exclusion, between the different "interpretations" of Scripture given forth by the believer and the rationalist. The rationalist, with heart and vision closed to spiritual truth, can give no interpretation except that which seems reasonable in view of what he sees; while the believer, in the attitude of faith toward God, sees the interpretation of Scripture through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

The interpretation of the Word is the very work for which the Holy Spirit has come into the world. That is not all of His work, but a very essential part of it. He is God's official Interpreter of His truth to the believer. Not to the rationalizer, but to the believer. And His work is so divinely perfect and absolutely final that all human attempts at interpretation, which are devoid of faith, are an insult to Him. He is the One who wrote the Word, and so He knows the meaning, not only of what He said, but even of what He left unsaid, and therefore none but He can interpret either the words or the silences of Scripture.

For example, when Melchizedek flashes, meteorlike, across the page of Old Testament history, and then disappears without a word as to beginning of life or end of days, who but the Holy Spirit could interpret those silences into spiritual meanings of unfathomable richness? Who but He who was responsible for those omissions could interpret them into some of the richest revelations of all Scripture concerning the eternal Priesthood of the slain and risen Son of God? And if the Holy Spirit can thus seize upon the very silences of Scripture in showing us the things of Christ, who will deny Him the power to interpret to those who will receive it what He meant by what He wrote? And who but the rationalist and the unbeliever can ever refuse to let Him reveal the perfect harmony between the facts of nature and the scientific references of Scripture?

It is the divine prerogative to cause us to understand the Book. When the risen Christ appeared suddenly among the disciples, first frightened and then scarcely believing for joy, He first convinced them that it was really He to whom they had already given their hearts, thus quickening their faith into renewed activity, "Then opened He their mind that they might understand the Scriptures." First faith and then knowledge of the truth; this is the scientific order.

Luther saw this when he wrote to Spalatin:

Above all things it is quite true that one cannot search into the Holy Scriptures by means of study, nor by means of the intellect. Therefore begin with prayer that the Lord grant unto you the true understanding of His Word.

Even Spencer had a glimpse of this seientific principle toward the end of his life. In his essay on "Feeling Versus Intellect" he showed that he had lost faith in his former estimate of the place of the intellect in the moral realm when he said:

Everywhere the cry is educate-educate-educate! Everywhere the belief is that by such culture as schools furnish, children, and therefore adults, can be molded into the desired shapes. It is assumed that when men are taught what is right, they will do what is right-that a proposition intellectually accepted becomes morally operative. And this conviction, contradicted by everyday experience, is at variance with an everyday axiom—the axiom that each faculty is strengthened by the exercise of it—intellectual power by intellectual action, and moral power by moral action.

What can this mean but that Spencer saw, at least dimly, the radical difference between the intellectual and the spiritual faculties?

The logic of all these facts and principles makes only one conclusion possible. When the man of scientific spirit approaches the Book which can reveal its truths to faith alone, he will not be unscientific enough to refuse faith to its statements and use his intellect alone. For he will see that the one who refuses the attitude of faith toward the Scriptures will be "ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth," while the one who accepts the Word in humble dependence on the Holy Spirit's interpretation of its meaning is on the one solitary highway by which a knowledge of the truth can be reached. When the Church and the Schools, therefore, agree on using this method of approach to the Word of God, they will at least have started toward the same goal.

2. The Spiritual Realm Must Be Given Primacy over the Natural.

Let us now see what it will mean to accord primacy to the spiritual realm over the natural.

There is only one possible method of doing this, and that is to interpret in the light of spiritual truth all the facts of the natural realm.

The man of scientific mind will therefore see clearly that he will be utterly incapable of giving such an interpretation to natural facts until he first knows what spiritual truth is, and this will mean the laboratory method of the experiment of faith.

But right here you may say that science has nothing to do with the spiritual realm; that scientific investigation stops the moment it reaches that realm; and that therefore to demand the use of these scientific methods in that realm is not only foolish but impossible.

But stop and think a minute. It is both foolish and futile to demand that either the implements or the faculties used in the scientific realm shall be brought over and used in the pursuit of spiritual truth. This is precisely the thing we are seeking to show. But that does not mean for a moment that the inquirer must therefore give up the scientific attitude of mind and cease to work according to the demands of the scientific spirit the moment he begins inquiry in the spiritual realm. For that spirit is simply an honest and accurate method of investigation, and because science is compelled to stop at the border of the spiritual realm is no reason why we should cease being honest and accurate when we investigate in that realm. It is perfectly true that the scientist, as such, has absolutely no pronouncement to make concerning spiritual truth; but it is equally true that the inquirer in the spiritual realm, if he does not pursue his inquiries by scientific methods and according to the demands of the scientific spirit, will have no pronouncement to make either. The man who intends, therefore, to be scientifie enough in his spirit to give primary truth its place of primacy by interpreting in its light the truths of other realms, and who, with the instincts of the true scientist, recognizes spiritual truth as primary in its relation to the natural, will be actuated sufficiently by his scientific attitude to determine to know what spiritual truth is, in order that he may be able to interpret natural truth in its light.

This will bring him face to face with Christ's formula for entering upon the knowledge of spiritual truth. Being honestly desirous of knowing what spiritual truth is, he will determine to do God's will in order that he may find out.

a. This Will Mean Surrendering the Heart to God.

This is the only thing it can mean. For spiritual truth is primarily heart truth, not intellectual truth, and the only way to know heart truth is to surrender the heart to that Holy Spirit of truth who "searcheth the deep things of God, "and who was sent into the world to "lead us into all the truth."

The grammarian, the philologist, the historian, the naturalist, the philosopher, therefore, have no service they can perform here. They cannot carry their apparatus over into the spiritual realm and weigh and measure, estimate and judge, illumine and interpret spiritual truth for us. When we stand here we are on that holy ground where we must lay off our sandals of scientific paraphernalia and stand before God with open heart ready to hear what He has to say. The moment we get to this realm, the whole apparatus by which truth is received changes from reason to faith.

But do you see where this brings us? Straight back to Christ's formula! This is precisely what His formula involves, for when a man wills to do God's will, he takes the first step in faith.

Then when a man comes into this attitude toward God's will, he will next inquire where he is to commence in the doing of that will, what the first step is in the will of God.

The Textbook tells us that the first step is to "repent and believe the Gospel." That this is the first step is self-evident, because the heart must be opened to Him who alone can give the knowledge of spiritual truth before that knowledge is possible, and repentance and faith are the opening of the heart to Him. For repentance is a coming into that attitude of heart toward God in which the whole life is laid bare before Him exactly as it is, thereby opening the way for faith; and believing the Gospel is an entering upon that faith which accepts the Gospel—the Good News—of Christ's finished work of atonement for sin through His shed blood on the cross, and reckons pardon for sin and new life in Christ to be now ours according to the Word of God. For faith, you remember, is both an attitude and an act; an attitude of surrender to God, and an act of receiving what God has for us; and this is precisely what it means to repent and believe the Gospel.

This means that the man of genuine scientific spirit will begin his pursuit of spiritual truth by sincere "repentance toward God" and "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" for salvation through His shed blood, which, according to the Textbook, are the first steps in willing to do the will of God, followed by a moment-by-moment dependence on Christ, Who is now his life, to reveal truth to him as he continues, by faith, in the attitude of an open heart. This is the only possible way of ever knowing that truth which alone can make us free.

It is true that it is quite the fashion these days for every unbeliever, agnostic, modernist, and unitarian to quote those words of Christ "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" in justification of the claim that something which he is pleased to call truth has given him what he fancies is freedom. But Scripture could not be more grossly perverted than by such a wresting of its plain meaning. The whole statement reads:

Then said Jesus unto those Jews that believed on Him, if ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Only the spiritually blind can fail to see the meaning of such a statement. It plainly means that the first step toward freedom is faith in Christ, the genuineness of which is evidenced by continuance in His Word; and that it is only in this attitude of faith that it is possible to know the truth that makes us free.

The truth is, therefore, that to be free one must believe on Christ. This does not mean to give intellectual assent to this or that fact about Him, but utterly to commit the life to Him, sin and all, past, present, and future. For the Gospel tells us not so much what to believe as Whom to believe, and Paul tells us what faith in Christ means when he exclaims:

"I know Whom I have believed," and then further unfolds what this involves by adding, "and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."

Faith is not simply giving mental assent to facts, it is primarily surrendering to a Person. This is what it means to believe on Christ, and anything short of this will neither give us knowledge of the truth nor make us free.

Then following this attitude toward Christ, the believer evidences his faith by continuing in His Word, by which he comes into experiential knowledge of its truth and its meaning.

Then coming to know the truth by experiencing it through faith, he is where the Son of God Himself becomes his freedom. And there is no other freedom. It is in the experience of Himself, not in an intellectual assent to facts about Him, that He makes us free by becoming the way to God for us, the truth about God to us, and the life of God in us.

It is therefore only he whom the Son sets free who is free indeed, for freedom from the curse of sin by the experience of Christ as Saviour, and freedom from the blindness of error by the experience of Christ as Truth incarnate, is the only freedom there is.

When the Word says, therefore, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin," it contemplates both the object of faith and the cause of forfeited freedom. For the Holy Spirit came to convict men of sin because they believe not on Christ. Unfaith in Christ is therefore the essence of sin. And sin is bondage, not freedom. Scripture describes the unbeliever in Christ as the bondslave of sin, held in chains of darkness and error. This is why it is impossible either to know even natural truth in any adequate way, or to be able to untangle it from error, without becoming a believer on Christ as the first step. So let no one who has not surrendered his heart to Christ in faith boast that he either knows the truth or is free.

But suppose a man should seek to know spiritual truth and yet refuse to surrender his heart to Christ in faith, then what? It could only be because he was so devoid of the scientific spirit that he did not want to know the truth at any cost. And no man who is in this frame of mind can ever come to know the truth. Haeckel defines the scientific attitude of mind when he says of the scientific inquirer that his

sole and only task is to seek to know the truth, and to teach what he has discovered to be the truth, indifferent as to * * * consequences.

This means, in the terms of our present discussion, that in order to know spiritual truth, the man of scientific mind will be willing to work by Christ's formula no matter what it costs him, for that alone will give him the knowledge of eternal things which will make it possible adequately to interpret natural truth.

But suppose the inquirer doubts the possibility of entering into a scientifie knowledge of spiritual truth by following this formula, what then? It can only be because he is so unscholarly as to make the blunder in logic of assuming as untrue or impossible that which remains to be proved.

No matter on which ground he refuses to surrender to Christ, therefore, no inquirer after spiritual truth can be either scientific or scholarly who makes this refusal; for he thereby renders himself not only utterly incompetent to know spiritual truth, but also entirely unable to accord primacy to the spiritual realm by interpreting natural truth in its light.

Suppose a man should take this attitude of indifference or unbelief toward natural truth. Suppose that after refusing to make the first experiment in the study of chemistry he should attempt researches in a realm whose facts required interpretation in the light of the chemical laws he had refused to learn in the laboratory. Then suppose he should dogmatically announce such interpretations of his discoveries in that realm as were altogether out of harmony with the most fundamental laws in the chemical realm. And then suppose that in order to maintain his unfounded and arbitrary interpretations he should so twist the statements of the textbook on chemistry into harmony with his theories as to destroy their essential integrity. He would win nothing but contempt from experienced chemists. He would certainly find no place in the ranks of scientists.

This is precisely why evolutionists and rationalists, using this method exactly, can win no response from experienced Christians, and why they ought to be outside the membership of our churches as long as they pursue this method. Believers can not listen for one moment to such interpretations of scientific facts by unbelievers as destroy the essential doctrines of the Christian faith and deny the inerrancy and final authority of the Word of God. For unbelievers have not only not secured a scientific knowledge of what they are talking about, but they have not even acquired the right to pass an opinion on the fundamental doctrines of the Bible. How can they announce dogmatically so-called scientific interpretations of the facts of nature which give the lie to the unmistakable doctrines of the spiritual Textbook whose truthfulness they have refused to put to the laboratory test of experience, and yet at the same time claim to be actuated by the scientific spirit? Those who do such things know nothing about the scientific spirit! Canon Dyson Hague was scientifically correct when he said that the rationalists are being opposed, not on the ground of their scholarship, but

because the biblical criticism of rationalists and unbelievers can be neither expert nor scientific.

There is but one conclusion possible. The man who intends to accord primacy to the spiritual realm will first acquire a verified knowledge of spiritual truth by the laboratory method of experience, according to the formula of the Textbook. For when he does this he will then be qualified to take the next step and make the primacy of spiritual truth an actual reality.

b. This will Mean Interpreting Natural Truth in the Light of the Bible.

We have now arrived at that point where we can sum up the logic of the scientific method of the laboratory as it applies to the investigation of the theory of evolution.

The man who is honest enough to want to know the truth at all cost, and accurate enough to insist on coming into a knowledge of the truth both by scientific methods and in the scientific order of primacy, will first acquire an adequate knowledge by experience, as we have already decided, of those statements of the Bible that can be verified to the experience, and then he will for the first time be qualified to arrive at an adequate estimate of the statements that cannot be so verified.

Then recognizing that all the scientific references of the Bible, including those relating to origins, are in that class that can not be verified to the experience, he will decide to come to no conclusions concerning them except such as will maintain both the primacy of primary truth and the unity of all the realms of truth. He will do this because it is the only thing he can do and still maintain a truly scientific attitude of mind.

This will mean that he will interpret all the non-experimental statements of the Bible, including the scientific references, in harmony with and in the light of those spiritual and experiential truths which he has already had verified to him through his own personal relations with God through faith in Christ. In other words, he will maintain the primacy of spiritual truth by allowing no interpretation of scientific facts that will cast either denial or doubt on those fundamental doctrines which he now knows are true, because they have been supernaturally verified to him through the laboratory test of faith.

Take an illustration. Suppose an author on chemistry, who was also a historian, should include in his textbook a history of the science of chemistry. Now if a man puts his statements of chemical laws to an accurate laboratory test and finds them true, he has the presumption established that the history, which cannot be so tested, is also true.

Yes, that illustration breaks down, but only at the point of human fallibility and imperfection. If that author were omniscient and infallible the illustration would be perfect.

Now apply it to the Word. When a man, through the unfailing laboratory test of honest faith, finds that the statements that can be put to the test of experience are infallible truth, he has not simply the presumption but also the absolute certainty established that all its other statements are true, because the infallible and omniscient Author has given it to us as His Word. It comes to us with a "Thus saith the Lord" ringing in our ears from beginning to end, and not with the multiplied repetitions of "We may well suppose" of the scientific guessers.

The man of scientific mind, therefore, will accept all the non-experiential statements of the Bible as infallible truth, including scientific and historical references and prophetic utterances. He will then accord the place of primacy to all understood scientific references of the Bible over all discoveries in the natural realm. He will do this by interpreting the few and fragmentary discoveries of finite and fallible man in the light of the statements that come to us as the Word of an infallible God, concluding that if there is any apparent inharmony, it lies in the partial discoveries or premature conclusions of scientists, rather than in any error of statement in the Bible. In other words, he will interpret science in the light of the Bible, and not the Bible in the light of science. And if at any time a harmonizing of scientific discoveries with the Bible seems impossible, he will withhold final conclusions until he has further scientific light, realizing that when he knows enough science he will then be able to understand the scientific references of the Bible, and the apparent inharmony will vanish.

Multiplied illustrations of this are so familiar that it is scarcely necessary to elaborate on it, as many will occur to the reader who is at all familiar with the essential harmony between the Bible and all real scientific knowledge, and with the fact that a multitude of scientific discoveries have been made, only to find that the Bible made reference to them in the most accurate scientific terms many centuries before their discovery.

A conclusion is now possible as to what attitude a man who has faith in an inerrant Bible will be compelled to take toward the theory of evolution. When he sees that the logic of evolution destroys every fundamental Scripture doctrine which he has already had verified to him by the Holy Spirit; when he learns that evolution is not only entirely unproven but even discredited by many competent men of science; and when he turns to the Bible and reads the statement repeated over and again that each species was created to reproduce only "after his kind"; he will be compelled to make a choice between evolution and an inerrant Bible, and, believing the Bible, he will reject evolution.

Then when he recalls that to Eve, Satan advanced an unproven theory which assumed to interpret, but had the effect of denying, the Word of God, and then reflects that the theory of evolution does precisely the same thing, he will become suspicious that the "father of lies" is behind the whole evolutionary propaganda. Other theories that are unproven and discredited fall by their own weight. The persistence of this theory must be accounted for on the ground that it can be used to destroy faith in the infallibility of the Bible.

It is quite true that there are many who say they believe the Bible and accept evolution also. But how those who are mentally sound and capable of logical consistency can accept two mutually exclusive propositions at the same time, it is impossible to understand. We will be compelled to let those who say they accept both the Bible and evolution explain how they do it—if they can! But meantime, if we take pains to make careful inquiry of such people, we shall find that in every case where logical and consistent thinking has any meaning whatever, a choice has been made between the Bible as an inerrant and infallible Book and the theory of evolution. It is quite possible for a man to hold the "scientific" or "historical" attitude toward the Bible, which makes it a human book marred by many errors, and believe in evolution at the same time; but the man who holds that attitude toward the Bible does not believe it at all! No one can accept the theory of evolution and the doctrine of an inerrant Bible at the same time.

And yet the attempt is being very skilfully made by many leaders in the Schools today to camouflage this impossibility. A very recent article by Dr. Shailer Mathews on "Christ and Education" is a typical illustration.

In the midst of the article Dr. Mathews frankly indicates his acceptance of evolution, because of which, he says, "the meaning of religion was enlarged" for him. Then he leaves the impression with the reader that the conclusions of modern science are to be taken without question, and also that our faith in Christ and the Bible are to be brought into harmony with these conclusions. That is, our faith must combine an acceptance of evolution with whatever attitude toward Christ and the Scriptures the evolutionary philosophy makes possible. This puts reason above Revelation and makes the scientific realm primary in its relation to the spiritual. The reader can judge, in the light of our previous thinking, whether this procedure is scientific or not.

Then in speaking of the fact that the educated man as truly as the ignorant man needs the saving power of Christ, he says:

But he must be saved as an educated man and not as an ignorant man. He cannot be forced to give up what he knows to be real. If he be told that Christian loyalty involves the abandonment of the assured results and methods of scientific investigation, he will refuse such loyalty.

This implied charge is later on in the article made specific when he says that some schools

"are refusing to let their students know the results of scientific investigation for fear lest such knowledge will ruin certain theological beliefs for which the schools stand"-a method he describes as putting a premium upon ignorance as a prerequisite for faith.

The reader knows as well as the writer that the whole attitude of the Christian Church, and therefore of true Christian education, challenges those words and hurls them back at their author for proof. Both the implied and the direct accusations are utterly without foundation. Indeed, the thing Dr. Mathews charges is the one thing true Christian education does not do.

When did the Church ever try to force a man, educated or ignorant, to give up what he knows to be facts in order to become a Christian? When was a man ever asked by Christian schools to choose between the assured results and methods of scientific investigation and loyalty to Christ 9 When has that institution which, above all others, has fought ignorance and fostered true scientific investigation used a method that put a premium on ignorance as a prerequisite for faith?

It is not facts that the Church either fears or refuses to accept, but such an interpretation of them by evolutionists and rationalists as to deny the scientific accuracy and therefore the inerrancy of the Word of God. It is altogether beside the truth to intimate that the Church is fostering an education that has to withhold assured scientific facts for fear their knowledge would ruin faith in any theological beliefs whatever "for which the schools stand." It is not the knowledge of scientific facts that true Christian schools ever withhold, but such theories and speculations concerning their meaning as would destroy the schools as Christian institutions if the logic of them were followed to the end. And as for the Church ever abandoning the assured results and methods of scientific investigation, this is precisely the thing the Church is fighting to maintain against the efforts of evolutionists and rationalists. It is rather the Schools that have been abandoning scientific methods of investigation, thereby reaching "assured results" that invalidate not only the doctrine of an inerrant Bible, but every other fundamental doctrine of the Scriptures. Indeed, this is the very reason why the controversy between the Church and the Schools is now on, and Dr. Mathews' article is typical of the attempts that are being made to make it appear that faith in evolution and the Bible can be combined-an attempt toward which all believers in an infallible Book will always be irreconcilable.

And this irreconcilable attitude is not without reason, but for the perfectly valid reason that the one who accepts evolution as a fact is utterly unscientific. For in the first place he accepts unproven assumptions and rationalistic speculations as demonstrated facts. And, in the next place, he thereby forces human interpretations of scientific facts to contradict the divinely verified doctrines of the Bible, thus thrusting confusion and contradiction between realms of truth which are in perfect harmony. And, still further, he interprets the Bible in the light(?) not simply of science but even of a false science, and thus compels unproven hypotheses to deny the truthfulness of the scientific and historical references of the Bible, thereby forcing into primacy a realm of truth that is not primary. And all of this because he refuses to follow the formula of the spiritual Textbook and put faith above reason and the Bible above science in his approach to truth. How can a man follow such methods and yet imagine that he is scientific?

One more thing remains to be said before this argument is completed. We started out with an unproven, though self-evident premise. Turn back to the very first paragraph in the book and you will find that the falsity of the pantheistic theory was assumed but not proved. Its falsity was assumed on grounds that have come to light as the argument has proceeded, and that might easily be turned to account now as conclusive proofs. For example, to refer to one of them, the self-evident distinction between the realm which contains the Creator and that which contains His creation science proves to be a real divergence in kind by being compelled to cease investigation with scientific apparatus the moment the boundary line of the spiritual realm is reached. And if there is as real a distinction between God and His creation as this indicates, the doctrines of pantheism are impossible.

But the theory of evolution fosters a doctrine of the "immanence of God" which is nothing but a modern form of pantheism. For example, Prof. Josiah Royce, of Harvard, has said:

God is the spirit animating nature, the universal force which takes the myriad forms, heat, light, gravitation, electricity, and the like.

And Prof. George B. Foster said:

God is a symbol to designate the universe in its ideal achieving capacity.

This is pantheism, pure and simple, for God and His created universe are not distinguished from each other. And this blots out the distinction between the natural and the spiritual realms.

Realizing, therefore, that no matter how perfect a course of reasoning may be or how inevitable the conclusions resulting it all falls like a house of cards if the premise is false, it becomes necessary to determine whether pantheism is false or true, in order that we may know whether we started with a valid premise.

Is pantheism true?

One thing we know is true. The Bible clearly and sharply distinguishes between God and His creation. No one who reads the Bible can dissent from that statement. And pantheism absolutely denies that Bible distinction.

It therefore immediately resolves itself into a question as to whether the Bible is true.

This brings us straight back to Christ's formula—"If any man wills to do, he shall know." He who accepts the challenge of this formula will come to know, beyond all possibility of disproof, that neither pantheism, evolution, nor any other doctrine that denies or casts doubt on the infallibility of the Bible is true. He will know it because it is supernaturally verified to him in answer to his faith.

This formula is the divine challenge to every form of unbelief in an inerrant Bible. There never has been an hour since Pentecost when the aggressive hurling of this challenge at defiant and destructive unbelief was more needed. And the whole Christian Church, backed by the Word of God, is hurling this challenge back into the teeth of the whole evolutionary camp today.

Either be fair enough, be scientific enough, be honest enough, challenges the Church, to act upon Christ's formula and gain for yourselves that supernaturally verified knowledge which will make further faith in the evolutionary theory impossible, or else do not assume to pronounce any further on those truths of which you know nothing because you have been unwilling to take the means to find out what they are. Go and join the ranks of the other unbelievers and Bible-rejectors, taking your doubt-born theories with you as a reinforcement to their warfare against the Bible, and then the Church can fight you in the open and drive you to defeat with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. If you are determined to destroy faith in the inerrancy of the Bible, at least be fair enough to come out from under the cover of "Christian education," and stop assuming to interpret in the light of evolution—a light that is darkness—those sublime doctrines which are at once the foundation and the message of the Church. Get out of the Christian schools, which were founded to strengthen, not to destroy, the faith of young people from Christian homes, and give place to those who believe the Book. Increasing hosts of Christian parents are too heart-broken over the invasion of their own homes by this destroying wolf in sheep's clothing to tolerate this situation much longer. They are asking, in the words of a Chicago newspaper editorial concerning the destructive teachings of Prof. George B. Foster, in the Chicago University Divinity School:

Is there no place to assail Christianity but a divinity school? Is there no one to write infidel books except the professors of Christian theology? Is a theological seminary an appropriate place for a general massacre of Christian doctrine?

And then the sentiment that follows in the next sentence is shared increasingly by multitudes in the Church in proportion as these destroyers become increasingly aggressive in their work of destruction. The editor continues:

Mr. Mangasarian delivers infidel lectures every Sunday in Orchestra Hall and no one is shocked, but when the professed defenders of Christianity jump on it and assassinate it, the public—even the agnostic public, cannot but despise them.

Either be scientific enough, cry believers to the evolutionists, to accept the challenge of Christ's formula with all its implications, or be honest enough to cease destroying the faith in an inerrant Bible you have sworn to defend but refuse to accept!

The Church is also hurling the challenge of Christ's formula at every other form of aggressive unbelief. No unbeliever, from destructive Higher Critic to agnostic and infidel, has the shadow of a right to make contrary pronouncement on the inerrancy and infallible authority of the Bible, for he has refused to put Christ's word to the test,—his unbelief proves it,—and he is therefore utterly incapacitated for passing any judgment whatever on that Book which unfolds its meaning to faith alone.

And as to the controversy between the Church and the Schools, the evolutionists must quit either evolution or the Christian schools, or the controversy can in no way be cured. For how can faith in an inerrant Bible and unbelief in its inerrancy abide in harmony in the same house? In the very nature of things, two groups who hold such absolutely antagonistic positions must either part company or continue the controversy born of the antagonism. The true Church always has believed, and always will believe, in an inerrant Word of God, and she cannot harbor within her ranks any group of people, no matter by what name they go, who do not take their stand without equivocation on that same ground.

If reason for this intolerance is asked, it will appear in the light of some questions asked by Dr. Joseph Parker. These questions are:

If the Bible is wrong in history, what guarantee is there that it is right in morals?

If the Bible is not a reliable guide in facts, how do we know that it is a trustworthy guide in doctrine?

However he may have arrived at his conclusions, it is extremely significant, in the light of these questions, that Dr. E. D. Burton, being willing to admit that the Bible is

not infallible in history or in matters of science,

has also concluded that it is

not wholly consistent and therefore not ultimately and as a whole inerrant in the field of morals and religion

What reason more can the Church want to justify her for intolerance of a theory that will do this to a man's faith? Is it not correct reasoning to conclude that if one man suffers such a collapse of faith after accepting evolution, others are likely to suffer the same thing? And when the Church observes this collapse taking place in every quarter, and then discovers that back of it lies the theory of evolution, is she not justified for being intolerant of that thing which is gnawing at the vitals of her faith? What can she say else than that the teachers of evolution, at least in the Christian schools, must either give up evolution and come back to faith in an infallible Bible, or part company with the Church?

It may be that one reason why the evolutionists are so loth to get out of company they do not belong in is because they fear that thereby they may lose their coveted reputation for scholarship. Prof. Howard W. Kellogg, formerly of Occidental College, hints as much when he says:

Science has again and again set aside as untrustworthy the so-called discoveries of evolution, has compelled the great German evolutionist, Haeckel, to confess that his drawings of missing links were from imagination rather than from objects found, has driven him from his university chair, and has compelled him to admit that "Most modern investigators of science have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of evolution, and particularly of Darwinism, is in error and cannot be maintained,"—and yet in spite of such admissions from men recognized as authorities in their respective lines, the doctrine of evolution appears to rule as absolutely in the educational world as if it were not a moribund hypothesis, already discarded by many, and to be discarded by others when scientific evidence rather than reputation for scholarship is allowed the deciding voice.

But whatever the actuating motive may be that has kept the evolutionists from giving up their unscholarly and unscientific theory, true believers in the Word long to see them do what Henry Drummond, that brilliant scientist, did before he died. On his deathbed he said to Sir William Dawson, as reported in this country in the writer's hearing by Dr. John Robertson directly from the lips of Dawson:

I am going away back to the Book to believe it and receive it as I did at the first. I can live no longer on uncertainties. I am going back to the faith of the Word of God.

When both the Church and the Schools consistently and sincerely take this attitude toward the Bible, the controversy will be ended in the one way in which the Church longs to see it end.

 

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