B. BRIEF STATEMENTS ABOUT

THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY'

DR. HERBERT L. WILLETT, OF CHICAGO

The fundamental doctrines of the Church are not the verbal inspiration of the Bible, the virgin birth of Jesus, any particular theory of the atonement, or a literalistic formula of the return of the Lord. These might all be true and yet not essential. The basic truths of the Christian faith are the reality and fatherhood of God, \thedivinity and saviorhood of Jesus, the efficacy of the atonement for sin, the vitality and value of the church as the instrument for the accomplishment of the divine purpose in the world, and the life eternal. And these all go back to the central belief in the Master Himself, the one requisite article in the primal creed of the Church. DR. JOHN ARCHIBALD MACCALLUM, OF PHILADELPHIA

The Church must seek the truth and teach that the one fundamental of Christianity is a Christ-like mind and heart. They alone do honor to Christ who have that mind. He calls upon men to follow Him, not to define Him. They honor the Bible who seek to live in accordance with its precepts rather than those who make claims for it that it never makes for itself. The spirit exhibited by the heresy hunter in every age is sufficient to prove that he has not learned Christ aright. The Modernist is never a heresy hunter.

DR. CLARENCE E. MACARTNEY, OF PHILADELPHIA

The great revolt within the Protestant Church today is a revolt against those who have ignored or denied the

1 Homiletic Review. 86: 186-90. September, 1923. The Battle Within the Churches; Fundamentalism vs. Liberalism.

Christ of the New Testament. It is not a quarrel over science, nor a dispute over theories of the second advent. It is a mighty and a righteous protest against a preaching which dishonors Jesus and would rob mankind of its alone hope.

REV. MURRAY SHIPLEY HOWLAND, PRESBYTERIAN, OF BUFFALO

The attitude of the Fundamentalists, instead of being Scriptural, as they claim, is directly contrary to the teachings both of Christ and Saint Paul. Christ attacked the literalism of the Pharisees who taught the inspired authority of every word of the law and the prophets. Saint Paul declared that the letter killeth— the spirit giveth life. . . .

What the world needs is the message that Christ came to give: 1. The fatherhood of God; 2. the brotherhood of man; 3. the indwelling life of Christ; 4. the law of sacrificial service; 5. the coming of the kingdom of God and of right; and not discussions as to an inerrant Bible and the virgin birth.

PROF. SAMUEL MCCOMB, OF THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

We need a drastic and far-reaching reformation, more thorough-going than that of the sixteenth century, if religion and the Church are to survive.

DR. JOHN A. RICE, OF TULSA, OKLAHOMA

Two antagonistic world-views are involved. To the one the world is a crystal, to the other a stream; to the one a fixed finality, to the other an eternal process. To the one, Christianity is a static thing of the first century; to the other, a growing thing evolving the life that was involved in Jesus Christ.

C. FOR THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

WHAT IS A FUNDAMENTALIST?1

They have certain great convictions in common, however, that divide them somewhat sharply from the Modernists. Some of the more relevant of these may be mentioned. They hold that Christianity is a particular religion, specifically different from all other religions, that it received its specific content once and for all from Christ and his apostles, and that this content has received authoritative expression in the New Testament. Still further, they hold that the great historic facts recorded in the New Testament, such as the death and resurrection of Christ, and the interpretation of these facts which it contains, are equally constituent elements of this content. Apart from these facts there would be no Christianity, but give the facts an interpretation other than that of the New Testament, and they do not give us Christianity. For the Fundamentalist, the doctrines of the New Testament are not merely explanation of certain great facts suitable to the intelligence of the first century; still less are they merely the intellectual expression of the religious experiences of the early Christians; they are explanations of faets valid for all time. And since they hold to the supernaturalism of the New Testament, they see in Christianity not merely one stage in the religious development of mankind, but the final and absolute religion. They hold that the religion of the New Testament is a unitary phenomenon, and that the attempts of Modernists by means of literary and historical criticism to get back of the Christianity of the New Testament to a more primitive Christianity have ended in failure, that

1 From Presbyterian. 94. No. 4: 3-4. January 24, 1924.

a sounder scholarship has shown that the Christianity of Paul is one with the Christianity of the primitive disciples, and the Christianity of the primitive disciples one with that commended by Jesus Himself.

MR. BRYAN ON THE "FIVE POINTS" 1

The first proposition deals with the doctrine that necessarily comes first, namely, the inerrancy of the Bible. It is declared to be not only true, but "an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our standards, that the Holy Spirit did so inspire, guide and move the writers of Holy Scripture as to keep them from error."

The Bible is either the Word of God or merely a man-made book. If time permitted, I might defend the Christian position and point out as conclusive proof of the Bible's divine origin the fact that the wisest men living today, with an inheritance of all the learning of the past, with countless books to consult and great universities on every hand, cannot furnish the equal of, or a substitute for, this book which was compiled from the writings of men largely unlettered, scattered through many centuries and yet producing an unbroken story— men of a single race and living in a limited area, without the advantages of swift ships or telegraph wires. Why is it that we have made progress along other lines and yet have made no progress in the "Science of How to Love" 2 the one science of which the Bible treats? We go back to the Bible for the foundation of our statute law and find that Moses compressed into a few sentences what the learned lawyers of the present day spread over volumes. We find in the Bible also the rules that govern our spiritual development and a moral code the like of which the world had never seen before and to which no improvements have been added throughout the centuries. Shall we accept the Bible as a book by inspiration given From his article on The Fundamentals. Forum. 70: 1665

1 See p. 21.

80. July, 1923.

2 Sic. Probably should read "Live."

or conclude that civilization has so dragged us down that educated men of today cannot do that which was done then by men without the aid of schools? My purpose, however, is not to enter into an extended defense of the Bible but rather to point out that it must either be accepted as the revealed will of God or be dethroned and brought down to the level of the works of men.

When one asserts that the Bible is not infallible, he must measure it by some standard which he considers better authority than the Bible itself. If the Bible is to be rejected as an authority, upon whose authority is it to be condemned? We must have a standard, where shall we find it? When one decides that the Bible is, as a whole or in part, erroneous, he sits in judgment upon it and, looking down from his own infallibility, declares it fallible-that is, that it contains falsehoods or errors. As no two of the critics of the Bible fully agree as to what part is myth and what part is authentic history, each one, in fact, transfers the presumption of infallibility from the Bible to himself.

Upon the first proposition all the rest depend. If the Bible is true-that is, so divinely inspired as to be free from error-then the second, third, fourth and fifth propositions follow inevitably, because they are based upon what the Bible actually says in language clear and unmistakable. If, on the other hand, the Bible is not to be accepted as true, there is no reason why anybody should believe anything in it that he objects to, no matter upon what his objection is founded. He need not go to the trouble of giving a reason for it; if he is at liberty to eliminate any passage which he does not like, then no reason is necessary. When the Bible ceases to be an authority-a divine authority-the Word of God can be accepted, rejected, or mutilated, according to the whim or mood of the reader.

The second proposition which declares it to be "an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our standards