It is peculiarly unfortunate to have Karl Barth charged with all the loose and semiliberal views advocated by those liberals who are taking refuge under the cloak of neo-orthodoxy. Pauck goes so far as to say that there is only one neo-orthodox scholar, namely Barth. For example, Brunner ascribes the Virgin Birth to Gnosticism, Niebuhr calls it theological jargon, but Barth proclaims and, in his own way, defends the Virgin Birth of Christ. After Amsterdam, Barth contended that the Christian truth be derived exclusively from the Bible against Niebuhr's contention that it also be derived from the best human philosophy, psychology, economics, et al. The Lundensians object to God's distributive justice and consequently to the "Latin" view of the atonement as to the satisfaction of Divine justice; Barth represents Christ as our substitute enduring for us at Calvary the wrath and judgment of God. In high Presbyterian places, the physical resurrection is denied; in the Gifford lectures Barth mightily testifies to the corporeality of the Resurrection, while his son Markus insists that the Risen Christ was touched and handled. "His appearance is not the apparition of a ghost." While Union (N.Y.) theology is uncertain as to the personal Second Coming of Christ, Barth has come out clearly for this and other New Testament eschatological prophecies, as events that will occur.
On the other hand, such facts ought not to blind us to the weakness in the Barthian disciples of Kierkegaard suggested by Schilder and pointed out by Berkouwer. With their recognition of the transcendence of God there is not an equal emphasis on the accommodatio Dei which Calvin magnified. In presenting God as revealer and man as knower, Calvin dwells on the self-accommodation of God first to man's finitude and then to human sinfulness. God speaks to sinftd man as a mother does to her prattling babe. The acme of accommodation is the Incarnation of God in Christ and this supreme act of revelation is not to be obliterated by the Kierkegaardian proclamation of the absolute incognito of Christ. The veil of flesh did conceal the Godhead, but in such a way that it could be and was revealed in the mighty works, the gracious words, and the saving ministry the Father gave the Son to do. As a result the men of Jesus' generation were less excusable than those of Nineveh. Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah and a Greater than Jonah faced the people of Palestine of the year 30 A. D.
Similarly, we cannot agree that the eternal truth of God could not be put into human thoughts and words. As God did become man in Christ, so did He think our thoughts and use our words. So did God inspire the Apostles to understand His Christ, and the Old Testament prophecies relating to Him. As a result, they preached the Word of Faith, the Gospel which moved from their mouths into the hearts of their hearers - as the Holy Ghost gave and used the Word of God they preached. And today, we have this Word which sets forth Jesus Christ our Lord, in His virgin birth, His going about "doing good", His words of grace, His expiatory death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of God, His reign as King over His Church, His coming again in glory as the yea and amen to all the promises of God: God's Word: The Word spoken from Faith to Faith: The Word that saves. For, "if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
For Professor H. L. Ellison of London, if we are to cover all the facts of revelation and spiritual experience, we say "that the Scriptures contain, are, and become the Word of God." They contain God's special, saving self-revelation; they are the divinely inspired record of this revelation; they become the saving Word of the living God speaking to me, as by the grace of the Holy Spirit I hear the Voice of the Good Shepherd in them.—W.C.R.
REPENTANCE
By Gordon Clark, Ph.D.
From Chapter XV of the Westminster confession, on Repentance, four points may be selected for brief mention.
The first point is to describe what repentance is. Such a description is necessary because irreligious people and people of non-Christian religions do not know the Christian meaning of the word. These people often think that repentance means being sorry for your sins. Now, it is true that repentance includes sorrow for sin, but it includes more. It is possible to be sorry for sin without repentance. A person may be sorry that he committed a crime because it got him into trouble. Such sorrow is not repentance. Repentance includes a godly sorrow for sin that recognizes sin for what it really is. And because the penitent recognizes sin for what it really is, namely, an offence against God, repentance also includes a turning to God. More specifically it includes a turning to God because of the apprehension of God's mercy in Jesus Christ. This turning is called conversion, so that conversion is a part of repentance. Then further, hatred of sin and turning to God carries with it a desire to obey God's commandments. These three aspects of repentance (sorrow, conversion, obedience) can be summed up in the etymological meaning of the word, which is, "a change of mind." Repentance therefore is a change of mind with respect to sin and God. From this description
