Seaasons of Ideas: What Is The Church Thinking?

Introduction

A departure from the concept of fact as truth.

Talking, idea-making, “conversations,” are all true.

Truth itself is to removed from vocabulary.

A departure from the concept of truth as vital.

If we can remove “truth,” then the value of it is gone as well.

Therefore, we must replace the concept of “truth” with other concepts.

A departure from the concept of the vitality of truth as the lifeblood of the church.

If truth is removed, and its vitality is replaced with other concepts based upon conversation, then the CONVERSATION becomes the lifeblood of the church.

Once that occurs, the church dies.

“In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called "modernism" or "liberalism.”” J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York; MacMillan and Sons, 1923), pp.4-5. cited in https://www.extremetheology.com/files/MachenLiberalism.pdf 08/08/2021

Men like Drs. John Broadus, A.T. Robertson, J. Gresham Machen, and others, stood up against this assault on the text of Scripture.

The result of the “Modernism” of their day, is the influence of it on the “scholarship” of Christianity.

Influence:

How far has this thinking gone?

This movement of critical theory in the church, which had to do with the actual books of Scripture and their writings, infiltrated the church at levels that most Christians simply are not prepared to think about.

“Modern liberalism in the Church, whatever judgment may be passed upon it, is at any rate no longer merely an academic matter. It is no longer a matter merely of theological seminaries or universities. On the contrary its attack upon the fundamentals of the Christian faith is being carried on vigorously by Sunday-School "lesson-helps," by the pulpit, and by the religious press. If such an attack be unjustified, the remedy is not to be found, as some devout persons have suggested, in the abolition of theological seminaries, or the abandonment of scientific theology, but rather in a more earnest search after truth and a more loyal devotion to it when once it is found.” Liberalism, p.19.

“The next stage was largely German. Eichhorn is the greatest name in this period, the eminent Oriental professor at Gottingen who published his work on the Old Testament introduction in 1780. He put into different shape the documentary hypothesis of the Frenchman, and did his work so ably that his views were generally adopted by the most distinguished scholars. Eichhorn's formative influence has been incalculably great. Few scholars refused to do honor to the new sun. It is through him that the name Higher Criticism has become identifies with the movement. He was followed by Vater and later by Hartmann with their fragment theory which practically undermined the Mosaic authorship, made the Pentateuch a heap of fragments, carelessly joined by one editor, and paved the way for the most radical of all divisive hypotheses. In 1806 De Wette, Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Heidelberg, published a work which ran through six editions in four decades. His contribution to the introduction of the Old Testament instilled the same general principles as Eichhorn, and in the supplemental hypotheses assumed that Deuteronomy was composed in the age of Josiah (2 Kings 22:8). Not long after, Vatke and Leopold George (both Hegelians) unreservedly declared the post-Mosaic and post-prophetic origin of the first four books of the Bible. Then came Bleek, who advocated the idea of the Grundschift or original document and the redactor theory; and then Ewald, the father of the Crystallization theory; and then Hupfield (1853), who held that the original document was an independent compilation; and Graf, who wrote a book on the historical books of the Old Testament in 1866 and advocated the theory that the Jehovistic and Elohistic documents were written hundreds of years after Moses' time. Graf was a pupil of Reuss, the redactor of the Ezra hypothesis of Spinoza. Then came a most influential writer, Professor Kuenen of Leyden in Holland, whose work on the Hexateuch was edited by Colenso in 1865, and his "Religion of Israel and Prophecy in Israel," published in England in 1874-1877. Kuenen was one of the most advanced exponents of the rationalistic school. Last, but not least, of the continental Higher Critics is Julius Wellhausen, who at one time was a theological professor in Germany, who published in 1878 the first volume of his history of Israel, and won by his scholarship the attention if not the allegiance of a number of leading theologians. (see Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, Green, pages 59-88.) It will be observed that nearly all these authors were Germans, and most of them professors of philosophy or theology.

Looking at the seminaries in the United States with the highest enrollment of Full-Time Students, the top ten are all seminaries which have embraced the ideals that were introduced from the points of view of the Higher Criticism use of the text of Scripture.

What began as liberalism has now come full bloom as changing meanings of words in Scripture.

Therefore, what began as subtle query about the authorship of the first five books of the OT, is now considered pure scholarship.

This has extended into current consideration for NT studies.

The end result has been the denial that any supernatural event, power, or being exists in the Bible.

Virgin birth

Signs and wonders

Deity of Christ

Supernatural beings

Some have opted to doubt the historicity of the New Testament in the name of scholarship.

Some have, therefore, redefined God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

All of this is done because of the introduction of doubt to the authenticity of the Bible in the books of Moses.

Church

The movements that have redefined the church today are largely based upon the movements that began during the 1700’s and have continue today.

The influence of men who submitted doubt into the minds of scholarship,

Then they submitted doubt into the minds of church leaders.

The church leaders then teach these doubts as possibly alternate meanings.

These alternate meanings then are given some level of “conversation.”

The “conversation,” then becomes the only level to which the church rises.

The end result:

2 Timothy 4:3–4 NASB95

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

What is the solution?

2 Timothy 4:1–2 NASB95

1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

2 Timothy 4:1–2 UBS5

1 Διαμαρτύρομαι ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ μέλλοντος κρίνειν ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς, καὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν αὐτοῦ 2 κήρυξον τὸν λόγον, ἐπίστηθι εὐκαίρως ἀκαίρως, ἔλεγξον, ἐπιτίμησον, παρακάλεσον, ἐν πάσῃ μακροθυμίᾳ καὶ διδαχῇ.

“…charge...”

“ in the presence of God”

“in the presence of Christ Jesus”

“By His appearing”

“By His kingdom”

“Preach the Word”