22. NEW FOUNDATIONS

necessitating a movement away from the old position to a new basis.

In this connection it is instructive to recall that the word "apostasy" (which is the original Greek word translated "a falling away" in 2 Thess. ii. 3, and which designates the event that is to come first, just preceding the advent of the Man of Sin) means a moving away bodily from an original position. What then are we to anticipate when we see the professing body, Catholic and Protestant, making a movement which its leaders themselves describe as an abandonment of the old foundations, and a transference of the edifice of faith to foundations entirely new, and laid by the hands of Man himself?

Again, the question, "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Ps. xi. 3) comes to mind. But this event, which would reduce the righteous to utter helplessness and dismay, causes no more concern to the Modernists than to the New Theology; for the former describe their movement as an attempt to transfer the rational defence of faith from the "tottering basis" on which it has heretofore rested, to a more secure foundation (p. 16).

The relation of the Modernists to the Higher Criticism is likewise clearly stated by themselves. They say, "We avow ourselves critics pure and simple" (p. 17); and they laud the work of the "illustrious critics" and accept without qualification "the assured results of criticism." They refer also to "Dr. Charles Briggs, the illustrious critic, well known for his Catholic tendencies." (Dr. Briggs owes his notoriety to the circumstances that he was, after trial, expelled from one large Protestant denomination for heresy, and was very promptly received and made a minister in another large Protestant denomination, where he is still disseminating his views.)

The Modernists also pay deference to "Science" as the real source of light and truth, saying:—

"We Modernists cannot in conscience withdraw ourselves from the light of truth, and put ourselves in harsh opposition to science and its leaders" (p. 33).

But this belongs to the new foundations upon which the Modernists propose to build, and before considering these we should first note some of the faults which they have discovered in the old foundations, particularly the Bible. Of that they say:—

"As the words are not directly from God, so neither are the ideas, since they often clash one with another. The whole book, words and ideas alike, is the work of man, without thereby ceasing to be wholly, as to both words and ideas—a distinction which we can set aside as unknown to antiquity—the work of God" (p. 37).

Concerning the origin of the Old Testament they say:—

WHAT "CRITICISM" HAS DONE

"The children of Israel were on the same religious level as the other nations" (p. 41).

Jehovah of Hosts was, therefore, no more than Baal, Molech, Remphan, or Ashtoreth. According to the Modernists, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob did not choose those patriarchs and their descendants to be to Himself a peculiar people. He did not bring the Israelites out of the land of Egypt and give them the fiery law amid the thunders of Sinai. It is not true that to the Israelites were committed the oracles of God, and that unto them pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God, blessed for evermore (Rom. ix. 4, 5).

Nor have the Modernists any greater regard for the New Testament than for the Old. They say:—

"Criticism has done for the Gospels what it has done for the Pentateuch."

They regard the Gospel by John, for example, as being in the nature of an historical romance written with a religious purpose. And inasmuch as the writers of classical fiction deem it perfectly legitimate to put long speeches into the mouths of their characters, such as would be presumably appropriate to the personages and circumstances portrayed, even so the author of this Gospel invented the discourses it contains. Thus they speak (p. 46) of the words which the Evangelist John has "put into the mouth of John the Baptist."

Coming to that part of the inspired Word which God has communicated to men through His servant Paul, they say that the latter—

"had a very complicated and artificial theology of his own" (p. 72).

When, therefore, Paul declared that the Gospel message proclaimed by him was not after man, that he neither received nor was taught it of men, but by direct revelation from Jesus Christ (Gal. i. 11, 12); and when he solemnly declared, as he said again and again, "this we say unto you by the word of the Lord," this devoted servant of Christ uttered deliberate lies.

It follows that, according to Modernism, the whole fabric of Christianity has been reared upon the foundation of the grossest, the most gigantic, and the most inexcusable and inexplicable series of falsehoods that has ever been fabricated. Indeed, the statements of the Bible-writers, which the Modernists and "illustrious critics" characterize as falsehoods, constitute a system of lies too vast, too complicated, and too void of anything like the motives which govern human conduct, to have been the work of mere men, particularly as these men did not work in concert. The premises of the Modernists lead logically to the conclusion that the foundations of Christianity were not only not the work of God, but were the work of a superhuman spirit of

MODERNIST DOCTRINES evil. If they believe their own premises, then they have stated the case mildly in declaring that the bases of the old faith are "rotten beyond cure."

Coming now to the central doctrine of Scripture, the Person of the Divine Redeemer, they say :—

"Paul had already speculated as to the pre-existence of Christ" (p. 83).

And they account for the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God, by saying that it originated some centuries after the life of Jesus Christ, and was the product of the "Messianic notion" of the Jewish people combined with the "apocalyptic notion" of One who was to appear in the clouds, which "notions," when transferred to Greek soil, which had for centuries been fertilized by the filthy beliefs in heroes springing from carnal intercourse between gods and human beings, gave rise to the "notion" of a unique relation between Christ and the Father. But this is so incredibly blasphemous that the doctrine must be given in their own words. They say :—

"The Messianic notion of the Son of David, and the apocalyptic notion of One who was to appear in the clouds, . . . when transferred to Greek soil, where parentage between gods and heroes was a common belief, opened the road to the notion of a unique relation between Christ and the Father, and even of an identity of nature" (p. 84).

Thus the Modernists set wholly aside the doctrine of a Divine Redeemer, made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and putting away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and they account for the belief of the saints of all ages in the Incarnation of the Son of God by a theory so shockingly profane, that it surely seems that to them, if to any one, apply those terrible words: "who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith He was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite to (i.e. insulted) the Spirit of Grace" (Heb. x. 29).

The Modernists sum up the work of the "illustrious critics" by saying that—

"Criticism has reconstructed the whole story of the evolution of Christianity" (p. 90).

That the Modernists, in common with the advanced theologians of the Protestant sects, regard the human reason as the seat of final authority in respect of all matters of doctrine, appears at many points in their manifesto. For example, they speak of—

"arguments from miracles and prophecies which offend rather than impress the modern mind" (p. 98).

Here again we perceive the tacit assumption that the test of a doctrine is, not whether or not it be true and sufficiently authenticated, but whether it be regarded with favour or with disfavour by the "modern mind."