We have occasionally witnessed the distressing phenomenon of an Adventist congregation in an Adventist church listening to an Adventist preacher deliver a sermon that is strictly modernist in approach, tone, and emphasis, not to say subject matter. The people greatly enjoy the sermon, but, as likely as not, neither speaker nor audience has any idea that strange fire is being offered. They would not knowingly depart from the fundamentals of this message, yet how great is their peril!
One of the most sweeping of recent trends in religion is the trend away from frank liberalism. The liberals have retreated from their earlier, more patently modernistic, positions, and have adopted a semblance of orthodoxy. This development makes the recognition and definition of modernism increasingly difficult.'
In detecting the spirit of modernism, the approach, the tone, and the emphasis are more important than the subject matter. It is the subtle shading of what is stressed and what is hushed that betrays the changed viewpoint of the modernist. There are certain approaches and emphasis which should serve to put us on our guard.
Before considering these points of departure in detail, we should observe that no one of them need be wrong in itself, and that many of them contain truths that are of no small importance. To assert that such seemingly innocent and even helpful truths and half-truths are, after all, dangerous ground, seems arbitrary and unwarranted. Yet the experience of modern Christianity has demonstrated time and time again that these well-traveled, apparently parallel, bypaths do diverge and lead far astray.
I. Practical Stressed to Detriment of Doctrine
First, there is the tendency to stress the practical, and to pass lightly over doctrine. This shift in emphasis too often betrays a loss of faith in the effectiveness of the old-fashioned doctrinal methods. This loss of faith is usually a slow, insidious process not involving any conscious repudiation of belief, but only a gradual, sorrowful realization that although the doctrines are doubtless true, still they somehow have not seemed to work. They are too theoretical, mysterious, and "apart from life." The demand is for something simple and practical ! Unfortunately, it is usually some such thinking as this that is the silent background of the growing indifference to doctrine and theology which we witness today. In reality, it is a sad, sad skepticism.'
II. The Imperative Approach to Religion
A second approach, or emphasis, that is to be looked upon with suspicion is that which represents religion as the ultimate, necessary, and satisfying answer to certain obvious needs and desires of humankind. The following quotations from contemporary religious literature should illustrate this approach.
"Religion has been significant to human lives . . . because of its deep and lasting satisfaction offered to man, under favoring conditions, in his certain and frequent times of need. It is its positive services which have made it so permanent a part of life." 3
"Whereas a few years ago the center of most discussion upon religion, both in attack and defense, was at the point of its credibility, that center has now shifted to religious efficacy and value to contemporary life. And nowhere is this change more obvious than amid the student generation of our day. The present-day students have had an almost completely secularized education, and the questions which they raise concerning religion are not so much 'Is it true?' but 'Is it useful?' • not Tan we believe in religion?' but 'Can we not get along just as well without it?' They are less apt to .deny religion than to discard it as an unessential factor for successful living. It is to this temper and attitude of the younger generation that We Need Religion is addressed." 4
"Sooner or later every intelligent man discovers that he must worship something or someone, a superior existence to which he can give himself wholly, and in which he loses himself, only to find himself enriched. Of and by himself a man is insufficient."
"What kind of religion can sustain the life of our modern world and meet its profoundly spiritual needs ? That is the question with which this book deals." 6
"The need of religion, if our culture is to be saved, is widely recognized, not merely by theologians, but by men concerned with science, with the humanities, and with the social sciences."
The assertion that man must have faith in something higher than himself is typical of this attitude toward religion. It might well be called the imperative approach.
This popular method is founded upon the principles of good salesmanship—that of developing a need, and then showing how beautifully the particular article fills the need. Although this is good salesmanship, it is very poor evangelism. For the need for faith is based, not upon distinctively Biblical and Christian grounds, but upon the frustrations and the uncertainties that are the common lot of man. Faith and religion are grasped after as a means to conquer fears, anxieties, and neuroses, to compensate for inadequacies, and to regain a sense of triumph and mastery. "One of religion's greatest gifts," we are told, "is its practical utility in helping so many to 'find themselves,' to 'pull themselves together,' to see through their life situations and to gain a mastery of themselves."
Admittedly a genuine Christian faith does accomplish most of these things for the believer, but it is by no means the only faith that will do it. There are many people who are able to overcome their fears and inadequacies, to have a sustaining faith in something much higher than themselves, and even to face death courageously without recourse to any religion whatsoever. Should they decide they need religion to round out a "more abundant life," why need it be Christianity? Why not some other faith? But if Christianity seems the more convenient, what possible difference could it make which particular brand is used, so long as the desired results are obtained? This, of course, is nothing but pure pragmatism, the prizing of faith for its own sake and for what it will do, irrespective of the independent truth or falsity of that which is believed.
The value of one's faith, however, cannot with safety be measured by the pragmatic test of whether or not it works ; for there are in this world many false faiths which have produced dazzling results. This is because there is inherent in faith (any faith) a great psychological blessing. Faith can do wonders; it makes millions for the patent-medicine vendors; it produces great piles of discarded crutches for the various "faith healers," and it performs innumerable wonderful works—oftentimes in Christ's name.
The value of one's faith is to be measured, not by the results which stem from its natural properties, but by whether or not it is centered on the right object—whether the arm of faith has laid hold on the only One who is able to save.
The religion of the imperative approach, with its pragmatic sanction, cannot but be liberal. It is incompatible with the idea that there is only one right way. It contrasts strangely with that religion whose sanction is the Word. The one is straight and narrow, because it is laid down by God; the other is broad and liberal, because it includes all the varying ways which struggling man has found will satisfy his self-appreciated spiritual needs.
We must ever beware of titling chapter of Life as "Man's Need." We must remember original sin, man's fall, his broken communion with his Creator, who yet loved him so that He gave His only-begotten Son. Then we will be basing our need upon distinctively Biblical and Christian grounds, and the order will be: chapter 1, "God's Love for Man"; chapter 2, "The Sinner's Need of Christ."
III. Humanity of Christ Exalted
A third modern emphasis is on glowing and streamlined descriptions of the man Jesus. We hear it often said that the greatest need of the people today is to have Christ revealed to them afresh. With this sentiment we are in the strictest accord. It is our greatest need. But it should be of the gravest concern to us as fundamentalists just what sort of Christ we present. Do we always so present the Saviour as to leave no doubt in the minds of our hearers that we are talking about Someone vastly greater than the hero of such modernist books as The Man Nobody Knows," and The Manhood of the Master?" Unless we do, there are listeners among us who will be led further astray, for many are already enamored of glittering portrayals of a virile Christ divested of divinity.
It seems to me that if we lay all the stress that should be laid upon what Christ is doing for us now in the heavenly courts above; and how, in the real person of the Holy Spirit He is knocking at the heart's door ; and how, in kingly glory He is soon to come again, we will not be much occupied with modernist descriptions of what a he-man He may have been while on earth: There will remain a place, of course, for a degree of subordinate emphasis on the manly characteristics of our Saviour."
—To be concluded in October
References
1 Francis D. Nichol, "The Disillusionment of the Liberals," The Answer to Modern Religious Thinking (Washington, D.C., Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1936), ,pp. 113-133.
2 The late fundamentalist scholar, J. Gresham Machen, in the introductory chapter of his sound and forceful book What Is Faith? (New York: Macmillan, 1925) ably demonstrates how "the modern depreciation of theology results logically in the most complete skepticism."
3 Horace T. Houf, What Religion Is and Does (New York: Harpers, 1935), p. 32.
4 Ernest F. Little, We Need Religion (New York Henry Holt & Co., /931), Introduction, p. 4.
5 Karl Stolz, The Psychology of Religious Living (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1937), g. 279.
6 Bruce Curry, Speaking of Religion (New York : Scribner's, 1935), Preface.
7 D. Elton Trueblood, The Predicament of Modern Man (New York : Harper's, 1944), p. 68.
8 Houf, op. cit.. p. 27.
9 Mrs. E. G. White, Steps to Christ (Review and Herald, 19o8).
10 Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1925).
11 Harry Emerson Fosdick, Manhood of the Master (New York: Association Press, I913).
12 M. L. Andreasen, A Faith to Live By (Review and Herald, 1943), Pp. 98-106.
