Is President Dr. John A. Mackay, Princeton, a Barthian?
In a notice of Dr. John A. Mackay’s recently issued book, “A Preface to Christian Theology,” Christianity To-day (Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.A.), makes the following comment: “These lectures apparently support the position of those who hold that Dr. Mackay as a theologian is to be classed with the school of Kierkegaard and Barth and Brunner rather than with the school of Hodge and Warfield and Patton. Their emphases are largely Barthian emphases. However, as both schools look upon the Bible as the Word of God in a unique sense as the record of His revelation, the fundamental emphases of these schools are largely the same* This does not mean, however, that the difference between them at this point is small. For while, according to Hodge and Warfield and Patton, the Bible as a whole is the Word of God, the infallible rule of faith and practice, according to Kierkegaard and Barth and Brunner the Bible is the Word of God only in so far as it is the record or witness to God’s self-revelation. The Barthians never say that the Bible is the Word of God, at most they say that it contains the Word of God. Hence such belief as they have in the Bible as the Word of God is consistent with the supposition that the Bible contains many errors and inconsistencies. We could wish that Dr. Mackay had been more explicit in his references to the Bible as the Word of God. We have been glad to note that unlike Brunner he does not ascribe errors or inconsistencies to the Bible. At the same time he nowhere ascribes infallibility to it. All his positive statements concerning the Bible, if we mistake not, might have been written by Brunner. The most that he says is that the Bible is the record of God’s self-revelation (page 21). In view of this, his reference to the “irrelevance of many of the issues that have been raised regarding the character and extent of the inspiration in Holy Scripture” (page 67) is rather disquieting, especially in view of his desire to have Emil Brunner occupy the chair of theology in Princeton Seminary. We wish that Dr. Mackay had expressed himself as to exclude the notion that he holds the Barthian rather than the Westminster doctrine of Holy Scripture. The latter alone is consistent with the historic position of Princeton Seminary.”
*This is a statement that is open to serious objections. The Bible is viewed from different angles by the Barthian and the Princeton School of former days.—D.B.
Keeping One’s Head.
“Keeping one’s head” is a phrase often used to describe well-balanced level-headed people who maintain a calm exterior, poise, and composure, in the midst of severely-testing unusual experiences, which sweep the average person off his, or her, feet in the swirl of the current of human emotions. This may manifest itself in a panic-stricken stampeding, or in merely following the popular line of least resistance, as, for instance, in the desire to be in the majority and to avoid the stigma of being peculiar, even if it means following the multitude to do the greatest evil. This balanced level-headedness and sanctified common-sense were never more conspicuously manifested in the ecclesiastical life of Scotland than in the history of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Present-day events are demonstrating and vindicating the truth of this statement to the hilt. There are not wanting signs, though we would like to see more and more of them, that denominations that once set off “to move with the times” in the name of modern scholarship during the past fifty years especially, are beginning to suspect and even realise that, after all their once dogmatically assured results are not so assured after all. Because we, as a denomination, refused to go a step with them, trusting the infallible light and guidance of an inspired Bible, we were, with all the ridicule, sneering, sarcasm, and bitterness imaginable, described as narrow-minded, bigoted, obscurantist, over-righteous, strict, proudly-orthodox, antediluvian, strait-laced, kill-joys, and hopelessly behind the times. Our refusal to commercialise and secularise the Sabbath, in the form of sanctioning travelling by public-conveyances, run in systematic disregard of the Fourth Commandment, has been described as legalism, while our refusal to unite ecclesiastically with those who sheltered heresies earned for us the stigma of isolationists. Truly, as a denomination, we should be deeply grateful and humble before the Most High for His gracious condescension in enabling us to maintain a level-headed balance amidst the clamouring agitations and spiteful abuse of precipitate hurrying ecclesiastics rushing past to move with the times. To-day many of our quondam traducers, without acknowledging their wrong-doing, are being gradually disillusioned, as they discover that the times with which they so anxiously and hurriedly moved, disastrously deceived them, notwithstanding its boasted twentieth-century refinement, culture, and scholarship. As an evangelical minister of the Church of England recently put it, “It is difficult to be truly orthodox without being proud of it.” A denomination kept faithful and level-headed by the undeserved favour of Heaven has no more reason to be proud than a condemned sinner saved by grace. The perpetual becoming attitude in the one case, as in the other, is humble gratitude to God alone.
Popular Misinterpretations of Scripture.
Among the many proofs of the Most High’s gracious condescension and favour in enabling the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland to maintain a level-headed balance and composure in refusing “to move with the times,” when the times were and are ecclesiastically and otherwise out of joint, is the solid denominational imperviousness, to the subtle infiltration of popular misinterpretations of Scripture, which is a conspicuous feature of our sustained distinctive denominational testimony. For instance, the 1900 Free Church, which claims exclusive heirship of, and ecclesiastical identity with the Free Church of 1843, publishes articles in its official organ against Antimonianism, Arminianism, and Modernism, yet mixes with denominations holding these heresies and adopts their Antimonian and Arminian methods of so-called evangelistic campaigning. This type of ecclesiastical mixing is very common and even popular among various professedly evangelical and Protestant denominations not only in Britain but throughout nominal Christendom. Among Wesleyan Methodists and Church of England evangelicals, for instance, it is a common occurrence to find otherwise fundamentally sound professed evangelicals preaching and practising Antimonianism, Arminianism, and Pre-Millenarianism. No doubt the former two false interpretations of Scripture owe their past and present popularity, in these ecclesiastical circles, to the evil influence of John Wesley, the founder of Arminian Wesleyan Methodism. With obstinately persistent repetition the saving of England in the eighteenth century from the perils of deism and atheism is falsely attributed to John Wesley, in these and other ecclesiastical quarters, to this day. The truth of the matter is that anything that was doctrinally sound and of permanent value in the Eighteenth Century English Revival owed its origin, development, and blessed results, under God, to such Calvinistic evangelicals as George Whitefield, Augustus M. Toplady, and William Romaine, with their like-minded fellow-labourers, while John Wesley’s Arminian Methodism has been as subversive in England of evangelical Calvinism as the hyper-evangelism of Moody and Sankey has been all over the English speaking world. It is amazing that it is generally among the same class of people that other popular present-day misinterpretation of Scripture—Pre-Millenarianism has taken deep root. It is simply painful to find not only among otherwise sound American fundamentalists this popular carnal view of the Millennium, but it is also widespread and prevalent among English Methodists and Church of England Evangelicals. These people fail evidently to realise that this Dispensation, since Pentecost, is peculiarly the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit. It is He who is the Glorifier of Christ in His people by His supernatural manifestation of Christ to their souls, by His Word. He is God and He is a Person as well as Christ, and without His quickening, regenerating, and sanctifying power in producing a Millennium, no personal advent of Christ would avail. The Word of God makes it abundantly plain that the time is coming when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, but that will be by the spiritual reign of Christ in His people world-wide, and not by a personal visible reign.
Britain’s Greatest Post-War Danger.
Readers of our magazine are already well aware of the subtle surreptitious methods too successfully employed by Jesuitical Romanism in this country to capture all the national sources of information, such as the B.B.C. and the public Press, in the interests of the satanic Papal System. During the Abyssinian Massacre by the Italians, as during the Spanish Civil War, the Papal System had an army of Jesuitically-trained newspaper correspondents spread all over the country, under the auspices of “Catholic Action,” writing articles and letters in our daily and provincial newspapers favourable to Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler, and their blood-thirsty Nazi-Fascist hordes. Conspicuous among these writers in the Scottish newspaper Press, for instance, was the Romanist Lady Maxwell-Scott, and her Romanist husband, Major-General Sir Walter J. Maxwell-Scott, whose perfervid feverish activities in support of Mussolini’s ruthless massacres constitute a disgrace to civilisation, while the Romanist Colonel Romanes of Pitcalzean, Nigg, was outstanding in the same connection relative to letters in the Highland newspapers. In England the daily newspapers were full of such propaganda articles and letters by aristocratic Romanist writers, by which they succeeded amazingly in imposing upon the credulity of the British reading public generally. The favourite bugbear of these subtle Jesuits was “Red” Bolshevism, implying, when and where they did not actually express it, that the Papal System was the only bulwark of civilisation against world chaos and the “Red” International revolution. The result was, and still is, that the vast majority of the non-Romanist English aristocracy fervently believe that Romanist domination after the war is the only bulwark capable of restraining the flood of “Red” international revolution, and retaining to them their accustomed privileges. Needless to say, Anglo-Catholic and Scots-Catholic pulpit propagandists are exploiting these fears to the utmost, and imposing upon the credulity of the Scottish and English aristocracy. The result is that Romanist ritualism is very popular in Anglo-Catholic and Scots-Catholic churches in preparation for the post-war so-called “Reunion of Christendom,” under the headship of the anti-Christian Pope of Rome. The Archbishop of Canterbury is helping forward and popularising this Romeward movement by the characteristically satanic subtle method of ecclesiastical self-effacement in voluntary subservience to the Romanist Archbishop Hinsley of Westminster R.C. Cathedral. Letters to the Press on the subject indicate that the Archbishop of Canterbury never now makes any important national ecclesiastical pronouncement without first consulting the Romanist Cardinal Hinsley for his approval. The English Free Church Federal Council at their meeting on the 1st April, 1941, manifested a similar betrayal of their Protestant trust in favor of Cardinal Hinsley. We accordingly solemnly and earnestly appeal to the praying people among our readers to plead fervently, importunately, and perseveringly with the Most High to disclose, in undeserved mercy, to our nation and generation the satanic nature of this great conspiracy and betrayal, and to hasten the downfall and utter destruction of the Papal System, to the glory of His great Name, and for the peace of nations.
The Supreme Earthly Enemy of God and Man.
There appeared in “The Gospel Witness” for 2nd January, 1941, the letter that the Editor, the Rev. T. T. Shields, D.D., Baptist Church, Toronto, Canada, wrote in reply to a letter he received from the Press Censor, taking exception to Dr. Shields’ criticism of the unpatriotic obstructionist tactics of Romanist French-Canadians. It may not be so well-known among our readers as it ought to be that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is being used as a Romanist propaganda agency in its weekly “Catholic Hour” programmes in which sectarian and purely Romanist dogmas and beliefs are discussed. The influence and power of Rome in connection with the Canadian Newspaper Press is also manifest in the Jesuitic pressure being brought to bear on the Press Censorship to suppress all criticism of Romanist obstructionist methods, as exposed in the pages of “The Gospel Witness.” Dr. Shields made a long and spirited reply, in which, inter alia, he said “Here at least is one man who will never submit to such tyranny, even if my protest should cost the last drop of my blood.” The learned Dr. concluded with the following significant paragraph:—”There is in this country a religious propaganda that has a political expression, and that is the propaganda of the Roman Catholic Church. I am a loyal subject of His Majesty King George VI. I recognise only one higher loyalty, and that to One who is King of kings and Lord of lords. If I know my own heart I am willing cheerfully, if necessity should arise, to die for either of them, and such necessity, as related to the war, would be to die for both, or otherwise to serve both. And it is my profoundest religious conviction that the supreme earthly enemy of both is the Papacy.”
War Expenditure and Sabbath Labour.
Mr. Richard S. Brownlow, Managing Director, Berkefeld Filters and Water Softeners Ltd., London, recently writing to the Daily Telegraph says, “Our war expenditure is mounting and will no doubt increase. Has it occurred to our authorities and employers how much might be saved by reducing ‘Sunday’ work wherever possible? . . . In an engineering factory employing a considerable number of workers on war work the manager found that the production was steadily decreasing owing to excessive hours. The workers were tired and listless. They did not run their machines at full production, and their keenness and interest in their work declined. He has stopped ‘Sunday’ work and finds that the output of the other six days is actually greater than that of the previous seven, and that the workers are fresher and happier with a dividing line between the weeks.” It is refreshing to find one in Mr. Brownlow’s position penning the foregoing. It is but another testimony added to the ever-increasing volume of evidence against Sabbath labour that has been accumulating for many years back, but such is the madness of our rulers that it seems even material loss will not cause them to refrain from showing their enmity to God’s holy day.
Correction.
On page 23 of the May issue of the Magazine and the fifth line from the bottom “ex-Free Church ministers” should have been “ex-Free Presbyterian Ministers.” We do not mean but that what appeared was quite correct in the sense that these ministers ceased to represent the Free Church of the Disruption, but that was not the point which we particularly wanted to stress at the time.