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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

The Coming Conflict on the Credibility, Sufficiency, and Sovereignity of Scripture

The Coming Conflict on the Credibility, Sufficiency, and Sovereignity of Scripture.

It is not therefore the innocently abstract question of evangelical Union that is before the Church in this present movement; it is whether you are to precipitate within what is practically only a missionary Church still living in tents, without the time or adequate scholarship for such a task, that "dreadful theological struggle" which Dr Briggs predicts is coming on all Churches, and which Dr Warfield assures us is page 57 even now at the doors. "Now we seem to have drawn near to a critical point in the history of revelation, at least as far as the English-speaking races are concerned," wrote Bisnop Westcott in the book last from his hand. And if Dr Warfield may speak for America, and Bishop Westcott for England, they are corroborated by the ablest living theologian of Scotland, Professor James Orr, in his recent work on "The Progress of Dogma." "There are not wanting signs," he says, "that we are on the eve of new conflicts"—and, let me remind you, "conflict" is "controversy" become acute—"in which new solvents will be applied to Christian doctrines, and which may prove anxious and testing to many who do not realise that Christian faith in every age must be a battle. That battle," he declares, "will have to be fought, if I mistake not, in the first instance, round the fortress of the worth and authority of the Holy Scriptures." Yes, that is the issue raised by this new movement. The question of a limited Atonement! and sacramentarianism! Brethren, if the Old Testament Scriptures are a book of "cunningly-devised myths" (2 Peter i, 16), our Saviour believed the myths, and could not distinguish the fabulous from the authentic, nor the forgery from the genuine writing. And if that is so, if the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are not true, trustworthy, and of divine authority, your theological disputes about the length and breadth of the Atonement, or about priestly caste, or any Christian doctrine whatsoever, are but the bickerings of bats and owls and crows in the dark loft of a cathedral steeple. The busy world will go its way and leave you. If, then, these mighty issues, these foundation presuppositions, are being raised by this abstract question of union, are there not men of real insight in our midst who will hesitate, as Dr Briggs says, to precipitate that "dreadful theological struggle" precisely at a place and time when it can do the maximum mischief with the least conceivable good? If, however, our brethren are determined to raise these questions, we demand that they raise them on their merits, in a straightforward manner. On our part, we shall not show the weakness of panic by exhibiting a feverish haste. Professor James Orr, in answer to an inquiry as to the position of matters in Scotland, wrote to America only last month: "My impression is that among the great mass of our ministers and people faith in the great evangelical verities stands unshaken, and that the 'new theology' is not Generally in favour." That, I believe, would be an accurate estimate of the position in New Zealand. But if we do not exhibit a feverish panic, neither shall we show a lukewarm indifference to the truth as it is in Jesus, nor for our weak brother for whom He died.