What a Leading Divine of the United Free Church thinks of Christ.—Dr. D. W. Forrest’s The Authority of Christ, published last year, comes in for a crushing review by Dr. Warfield in the October number of the Princeton Theological Review. In order that our readers may have an idea of the daring presumption of modern divines, and of Dr. Forrest in particular, in dealing with Christ’s knowledge, we cannot do better than quote the
following summary of Dr. Forrest’s teaching on this particular point by Dr. Warfield: “‘The detailed course of the kingdom in the world’ was ‘inscrutable’ to Him as to us; because ‘the influences that determined it were infinitely complex,’ and above all, the factor of the free human will comes in to modify all forecasts (p. 300-312). It is not difficult of us to convict Him even of positive errors. No doubt He shared the current opinion which attributed the 110 Psalm to David, and the latter chapters of Isaiah to Isaiah (p. 69). Nor did He err only in matters of Biblical Criticism, ‘His teaching in many of its parts is coloured by temporary Jewish influences’ (p. 96), even the Parables, at least those that portray the final judgment, are affected by suggestions from Jewish traditional belief.”
Dr. Warfield’s Criticism of Dr. Forrest’s “Authority of Christ.”—Dr. Warfield concludes his criticism of the above work, which has been so highly praised on this side the Atlantic by a certain school of theologians, by words which reveal with what ominous feelings he regards Dr. Forrest’s teaching. “We must not neglect to say frankly,” he writes, “before closing, nevertheless, that in the course of his discussion, Dr. Forrest occasionally hints at theological positions which we cannot share, and which on another occasion we should like to traverse, such as, for example, his very defective doctrine of Providence in connection with an exaggerated doctrine of freedom (pp. 139, 140, 142, 143, 146), or his conception of the gift of the Spirit without distinction of His miraculous endowment of the Apostles, and His indwelling in the people of God, or indeed, his fundamental conception of Christianity as summed up in the filial spirit (pp. 153, 202). Nor would we neglect to say equally frankly that we deprecate the apparently confused way in which certain findings of modern criticism are here and there utilised, as if they stood apart item for item and did not form a part of a closed system of anti-supernaturalistic interpretation. But on none of these can we dwell now. We shall only stay to say in a word that Dr. Forrest’s second work does not seem to us to fulfil the promise of his first one: but exhibits him as embarking upon a line of thought from advancing in which his wellwishers will heartily pray he may be saved.”